Tuesday 24 May 2016 in the Gulf of Taranto the destroyer Andrea Doria made its first launch of a MU90 torpedo.
The MU90 is a modern underwater weapon supplied to Navy ships with anti-submarine capability, made in cooperation between Italy and France through the merger of the torpedo projects already started walls (Thompson and DCN St. Tropez) andA290 (Whitehead Alenia Underwater Systems).
The MU90 belongs to the family of "light torpedoes", which means that they can be launched from both ships and helicopters.
The strong ability to search and discriminate the target, the resistance to countermeasures, the high speed, the autonomy and the driving logic, are such as to make this type of torpedo, an extremely effective and performing underwater weapon that arouses the interest of many marinas around the world.
The launch of a torpedo is a complex operation that requires teamwork between the ship, the naval station (Maristanav Taranto), the divers (staff of the SDAI Nucleus) and the personnel of the Military Arsenal for the preparation, boarding and recovery.
During the exercise, the launch procedure sees the insertion of a fictitious sonar contact on the combat system management computer (CMS). Upon the appearance of the contact, in rapid sequence, the designation of the weapon system, the order of launch and fire take place. The torpedo is fired into the sea from the launch tube with a jet of compressed air and, once in the sea, begins its run towards the target.
In this case, after launch, the torpedo activates a float, stops and emerges to be recovered by divers. Inside the training torpedo there is a recording device, a kind of black box, which records all the parameters of the operation, very important information to evaluate the effectiveness of the launch.
For Ship Andrea Doria the launch is the first such activity since the delivery of the unit. These activities are very important for training personnel and verifying the effectiveness of the combat system.
